“The playoffs run 57 days, and for me it was 56 days, 23 hours and lots of minutes of pure stress and anxiety, and I really didn’t start to enjoy it until there was about 30 seconds left in the game and it finally dawned on me that we had beaten the Evil Empire,” Cuban said on the show.

After losing Game 3 in Dallas to fall into a 2-1 hole in the series, Cuban said he wasn’t worried. In fact, he was convinced the Mavericks would rebound to win because of Miami’s lack of changes in game strategy.

“After Game 3, our guys said, ‘They aren’t making any adjustments. We got ‘em,’ and so the confidence was through the roof,” Cuban said.

The Mavericks bounced back to win the final three games of the series and claim their first NBA title.

Carlisle made several key moves that set the comeback in place. J.J. Barea was inserted into the starting lineup in place of DeShawn Stevenson. The Mavericks also became more physical when Brian Cardinal got more playing time in the final three games over defensively-challenged sharpshooter Peja Stojakovic. Dallas also worked hard to take advantage of Miami’s aggressive close-out defense with more consistent shooting from Dirk Nowitzki later in the series.

And it also didn’t hurt that LeBron James disappeared in the fourth quarter throughout the series.